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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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Gonna make myself look really boring here and admit I only recently saw a 360° video for the first time a few weeks back (because I could finally play them after a browser update) :w00t:
Looks like fun, I understand all the excitement around it, and I'm pleased RL added it to iClone. Just one thing puzzles me though, how on earth are we supposed to play the damn things?
I know we can play them on YouTube etc, but what I mean is let's say I make a 360° video in iClone and render it out, I have the file sitting there on my Desktop so now I want to play it on my computer just like any other video file. I honestly can't find anything that does, it's weird, even the mighty VLC won't play the things!
I'd have thought due to the polularity that just about every player out there would play them, but no, maybe I'm looking at the wrong sort of programs or something.
How do I play them? :crazy:
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By wires - 9 Years Ago
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A good free desktop viewer is available from Kolor, it was called "Kolor Eyes" and has been updated and renamed to GoPro VR Player.
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By RobertoColombo - 9 Years Ago
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Hi Pumeco,
nice to have you back again in the Forum.
You can use GoPro VR Player (http://www.kolor.com/gopro-vr-player/download/).
Cheers
Roberto
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By RobertoColombo - 9 Years Ago
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Ahh... Gerry... 1 mins faster than my answer.
Pumeco now has 2x same link: he can't miss it :P
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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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Cheers Gerry and Roberto for the link, that's exactly what I need, it's even a nice clean purposeful program (no bloat) - great stuff :cool:
And thanks for the kind words, Roberto, my crazy guitar-playing Italian friend ;)
It's good to be back, definitely missed you all, even those I argue with (but don't tell anyone I said that) :P
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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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I can see how these 360° videos would work really well for advertising iClone products, a sort of 'living ads' kinda thing. To be honest I'm not really feeling the 'video' aspect of the format, I'm seeing it more as a sort of 'living stills' kinda thing so I suppose it fills a gap in the market. Does feel a bit of a letdown in one repsect though, and that's audio. Before I tried one of these, I assumed the sound would be panoramic as well, so that if something is in front of you, that's where the sound comes from, and when you rotate, the sound rotates with it.
I'm very surprised such a thing isn't a part of the format specification, and what a bummer, cause that would have put it on another level I think!
Still, fun stuff :D
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By animagic - 9 Years Ago
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To achieve 360 audio you would need to have a way to position sounds sources and render them real-time from wherever they come from. You can do that in a virtual environment (such as a game) but AFAIK there is no 360 audio format that can be combined with video such that it allows dynamic repositioning.
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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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Totally agree, thing is though, why didn't they do that?
Very strange, I mean it can't have been difficult to implement cause all they would have needed to do is take the rotation data from the user as they rotate the movie, then dynamically control the positioning of the sounds using that data. I suppose real world recording setups would ideally need four mics to record the audio, but that's no biggie, they already sell 360 cameras now, so no reason a quad-mike setup couldn't be part of those gadgets as well.
It's a frustratingly dumb situation really, cause imagine you created a corridor with a huge fan buzzing-away on the right of the viewer. It's gonna be 100% wrong the moment the user turns around and faces the other way. The only way I can think of to avoid problems like that is to use two-channel mono. All sound effects in mono (through both channels), but music and ambience in stereo. I can't remember who it was, but I think it was either mtakerkart or JasonJBrown, pricked my interest over this stuff in a way the official promotions never did. I remember one of them say that we're going to have to consider the end user more seriously cause as creators, we're now in the position to put the user in a more intense, realistic environment.
So I thought, yeah, that sounds bloody awesome, I'll scare my viewers to death with unexpected sounds of things creeping-up behind them etc! Without 360 audio though, it's not possible to do such things as that, lol, that's such a shame cause I was looking forward to creating some creepy little environments and stuff like that. I could still do the environments, but it's such a bummer the audio doesn't follow the rotation!
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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Well. It seems to exist.
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By animagic - 9 Years Ago
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Responding to pumeco:
Well, yes, but where would the sound come from? (Speaking of iClone, obviously.) For example, I don't rely on the audio in iClone other then for lip-synching, and currently there is no mechanism where the sound attached to a prop or an avatar is placed in space. But even that wouldn't even be enough; each sound would need its own channel that is then dynamically combined in a kind of surround mix. It is an interesting problem and it would be cool, but I don't believe it's simple to solve for recorded media.
But I agree, it would do more to immersion than stereoscopic VR as someone requested the other day.
A long time ago there was something called VRML (VR markup language), which was aimed at creating a 3D environment you could move through with any sound emitters being adjust as you traversed the environment. It was very crude, and the home PC wasn't really powerful enough, but it was compelling. VRML is obsolete, but apparently people are looking at modern equivalents. See for example here: http://www.web3d.org/event/w3c-workshop-web-and-virtual-reality. So what you want may actually be around the corner.
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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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@Rampa
Yup, that's exactly what I'm getting at! That's the first one I've seen with that ability but at least it has a suitable audio format. Don't agree with the name it has though, if that's the official term, "Spatial Audio" is something usually associated with psychoacoustics, and while there is some involved, the term "Spatial" is already taken and accepted in audio circles. I reckon they thould have called it the 'Audio 360' format or someting like that.
Anyway, that's great news, I'm glad it exists but the problem now then is that iClone doesn't have the ability to place soundfiles in it's scenes to encode the 360 audio with the movie :doze:
I feel a request coming on!
@Job
Looks like it's already here, lol, but as for doing it in iClone, it would probably be done by attaching soundfiles to objects in your scene. Like if you had a running tap, you'd just attach the sound of a running tap to the model of the tap in your scene. Same with any other object in your scene that would make a noise. Then when you output the movie to 360, iClone uses the position of the objects to decide how it encodes the audio in it's 360 panorama. Sounds as if that's how it's done in that VRML stuff you mentioned. I've never used VRML so couldn't say, but it sounds like it from your description.
I'll have to look into the format those 360 videos are using and see if it's possible to add the 3D sound after the movie has been output without it. Form the description in that video it's based on surround sound, so it's probably possible to do it in any editor capabale of editing and encoding surround sound :w00t:
Times like this I wish I had Vegas Pro instead of Platinum :Wow:
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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There are VST plugins for the major DAWs that do it. It'll be in a few video editors soon, if not already.
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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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Which VSTs, are you aware of any specific? I just had a quick search for 360 VST, and all I can find is something from Waves and a few 360 reverbs.
Not changing my DAW/s so can't go that route.
I get the feeling I might have to wait and see what Magix does with Acid and Vegas now they own them.
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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pumeco (11/14/2016)
Which VSTs, are you aware of any specific? I just had a quick search for 360 VST, and all I can find is something from Waves and a few 360 reverbs.
Not changing my DAW/s so can't go that route.
I get the feeling I might have to wait and see what Magix does with Acid and Vegas now they own them.
http://dysonics.com/first-look-at-rondo360-vr-audio-software/
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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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Cheers Rampa, that does look very cool and capable, no mention of price though, so we'll see!
Good to know the system will work with any DAW that supports VST, and there's nothing special required :cool:
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By wendyluvscatz - 9 Years Ago
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https://support.google.com/jump/answer/6400185?hl=en
this is how they do it
you would need to have coding/scripting ability by looks, I certainly could not do it, will need to wait until someone makes an app.
I think it amounts to a 5.1 channel audio track conversion, so if you can make a 5.1 audio track that would be a start, iClone only does stereo so it would need to be post edited in a videoeditor that supports it.
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By pumeco - 9 Years Ago
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Excellent find, Wendy, that software at the link it mentions (ambiX) looks spot-on, it's even available on Linux, which is great cause that means it should work in LMMS (also Linux or Windows).
http://www.matthiaskronlachner.com/?p=2015
https://lmms.io/
Yup, veeeeeeeeery nice, that's the one I'll be using just as soon as I have a video to use it on :D
Why do you mention maybe needing coding or scripting ability, though?
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By animagic - 9 Years Ago
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I guess I was not in step...:blush: Thanks for the link, Wendy, and the additional information, Pumeco!
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